


Sick together

by neworld



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Brotherly Love, Caring, Common Cold, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Sick Diego Hargreeves, Sick Klaus Hargreeves, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:47:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27589072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neworld/pseuds/neworld
Summary: Klaus and Diego are hanging out because of reasons and they are both get sick at the same time.wrote this ages and ages ago, wasn't sure if I wanted to post it but it will be deleted if I don't post it today.
Relationships: Diego Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	Sick together

Diego maintained a good relationship with the police considering he was a vigilante. Particularly the people he had known from his time as a police cadet. He helped them out when he could, and they begrudgingly respected the results he was able to achieve outside the law. So it wasn’t unheard of for cops to do Diego the odd favor, like looking the other way to his breaking and entering, or running a licence plate for him, or like in this particular instance, calling him to come pick up his chaotic gay brother instead of charging him.

A former college of Diego’s, Mike Lopez, had called him to tell him they had Klaus and to come pick him up. Lopez worked in the narcotics unit so had met Klaus many times. When Diego arrived, he found the police had Klaus locked in the drunk tank. Rather than looking upset with this Klaus seemed to be enjoying himself and was engaged in spinning an animated tale for officer Lopez, with lots of flamboyant gestures. Lopez stood just outside the bars, arms folded, listening to Klaus with weary amusement.

Diego relaxed the moment he saw this. The atmosphere of the room was calm. Klaus was clearly not in serious trouble. Lopez noticed Diego and greeted him.

“He’s not getting charged.” The cop told Diego. “I just wanted to keep him out of trouble until I could speak to you.”

“To me?” Diego asked curiously.

“Diego!” Klaus cried from the drunk tank, and rambled at him, delighted.

“So good to see you! It’s been _too_ long! Loving the dark, brooding look you’ve got going on there, very menacing, look out crime _Amiright?_ ”

Klaus pushed his lanky arms as far as they would go through the bars in an attempt at a hug.

Diego stood stubbornly just out of reach. He spared his brother a quick, withering look then turned back to the police officer.

“Someone is dealing tainted heroin.” The officer told him grimly, his voice sounded raspy and a bit nasal. “We’ve had a whole spate of deaths.”

Diego paled at this, he would try to look out for Klaus, but it wasn’t easy, he was hard to keep track of with no fixed address and a habit for wandering off without saying anything. This type of news always freaked Diego out.

“Any ideas on who?” He asked the officer.

“No unfortunately…” The policeman’s voice cracked, and he had to pause and cough into his fist. “Sorry… I got that bug that’s been going around.”

Diego hadn’t particularly noticed that there was a bug going around but nodded sympathetically anyway.

“No one who has bought this shit has lived to tell where it came from.” The officer continued after clearing his throat. “So we have no leads.”

Diego went straight into detective mode, grilling Lopez about the people who had died, where they were found, where they hung out, who had been busted selling in that area. Until Lopez got irritated with him and released Klaus just to be rid of them both.

“Team up!” Klaus cried happily as he clamored into Diego’s car.

“If by team up you mean I’m babysitting you until this batch is off the streets…” Diego agreed blandly.

“I don’t need a babysitter.” Klaus rolled his eyes, then for no apparently reason glared at the back seat and hissed like he was telling someone to shut up. But Klaus sometimes did things like that, so Diego just dismissed it.

“Besides all your witnesses are dead, I’m integral to this team up.” Klaus told Diego haughtily.

Diego glanced at his brother in surprise.

“Your agreeing to talk to ghosts? Willingly?” He asked.

Klaus shrugged.

“I have a vested interest.” He told Diego.

This made sense to Diego, he supposed Klaus didn’t want himself or his fellow junkies to die after all.

“Are you sober enough to see ghosts?” Diego asked his brother.

“I was on my way to my dealers when your pal picked me up.” Klaus scowled.

Now that he mentioned it Klaus did look sickly pale and was shaking a little.

Diego drove them to a neighborhood that Lopez had mentioned had been affected by the bad batch. They wandered around the street, looking for a junkie ghost to talk to.

Klaus was shivering and sweating like crazy. His eyes were feverish, and he seemed anxious and exhausted. After a few unsuccessful hours Diego took pity on him and took him back to his boiler room to lie down and rest for a bit.

Once he was sure his brother was asleep Diego listened to the police radio. He overheard a call out to a body that had been found in park, a suspected overdose. Diego decided to go check it out and it did turn out to be a related case. But again, the police were unable to find the source. Diego couldn’t find anything out either and felt prickly and frustrated, to his annoyance his nose started running and he had to keep sniffling. He watched the paramedics load the body into an ambulance from shadows across the street. This person, he thought, was somebody’s Klaus.

Suddenly worried he had left his Klaus alone too long Diego rushed home briefly panicked to not find him in bed, but he soon found Klaus puking his guts up in the gym bathrooms.

“You OK?” Diego asked tentatively as he stood worriedly over his brothers hunched form.

Klaus was drenched in sweat and flushed with racoon eyes from smudged makeup and illness, he looked up from the toilet briefly to give Diego a baleful look then went back to puking.

Eventually when he was done, Klaus just flopped down on the grimy floor of the bathroom with a groan.

“Come on.” Diego urged his brother, gently shoving at him to encourage him to get up. “You will feel better if you take a shower.”

Klaus whined but let Diego help him up and steer him over to the showers.

Diego sneezed and Klaus started to bless him but then sneezed as well.

“This bathroom is disgust…” He began but broke off and sneezed again. “…disgusting and moldy.” He complained pulling his sweaty clothes off.

Diego turned his back to give his brother privacy but stayed nearby in case he fainted.

“Yeah well, not like your bathroom is any better.” He pointed out. “Your bathroom is literally a gutter in the street.”

He heard Klaus laugh at this then sneeze again and curse. Diego had been starting to worry he was catching a cold but hearing Klaus sniffling and sneezing as well made it seem more likely to just be something in the air, affecting them both.

Once Klaus was out of the shower and wrapped in a towel Diego got him some clothes and helped him to bed.

Klaus looked horrible. Washed out pale and deep bags under him eyes. He kept sneezing long after they had left the showers, making Diego question that it was the mold effecting him. When Diego asked if he was ok Klaus just made a flipant joke so he couldn't be too badly off...could he?

The next morning Diego could no longer fool himself that he wasn’t catching a cold. He woke up with a sore throat that burned when he swallowed, and his nose was so stuffy it muffled his speech audibly. He tried blowing his nose, but it didn’t help him breathe any better, it just made his head hurt. Irritated Diego made coffee and went to check on Klaus, he had let his brother have the bed last night since he was clearly suffering.

Klaus had been tossing and turning all night with bad dreams but now he was sleeping peacefully. He was snoring softly with his mouth hanging open and drooling all over Diego’s pillow. But he was looking better after a night’s sleep, still pale and with a flush to his cheeks, but he wasn’t sweating or shaking.

Diego felt his forehead and found he was only a little warm, the worst of the withdrawal was probably over. Although Diego was very quiet and careful Klaus’s eyes snapped open the second Diego touched him. He was such a light sleeper.

He sat up with a gasp, then choked and coughed.

“You good?” Diego asked frowning, he handed Klaus a cup of coffee.

“Peachy.” Klaus told him flatly, his voice sounded stuffy and a bit hoarse, but he had just woken up. Klaus sniffled thickly and rubbed his eyes hard. He accepted the coffee with a nod of thanks but grimaced when he sipped it. It was just instant coffee and Diego was about to make a comment about beggars not being choosers but noticed Klaus’s gaze flicker around the room and rest on things he couldn’t see.

Maybe, Diego thought, Klaus wasn’t grimacing about the coffee but at ghosts. Diego didn’t want to think about who might be haunting his room, the idea he was constantly walking through unseen people was disturbing. This was why no one ever encouraged Klaus to talk about what he experienced despite how obviously it affected him.

“Ready to go interview some junkie ghosts?” Diego asked they had sipped their terrible coffee peacefully for a few minutes.

“Do you have any clothes I can borrow that aren’t depressing?” Klaus asked looking down at the faded old gym clothes of Diego’s he was wearing with a despairing frown.

Diego had never really cared about his appearance, so he didn’t have a lot of options for his brother, but after poking through Diego’s wardrobe Klaus eventually found a mixture of both Diego’s black clothes and things girls had left behind that seemed to satisfy him.

The second they stepped outside it became clear Klaus hadn’t factored the outdoor temperature into his clothing choices because he started shivering and sneezed several times.

“Why didn’t you wear something warm?” Diego snapped at him. “It’s cold out.”

It was windy and overcast, the streets were wet and full of puddles from recent heavy rain.

“What? I wore a scarf.” Klaus argued holding up the ends of the garment to demonstrate.

It was a lacey black scarf, delicate, thin and clearly an accessory rather than a functional scarf. It had been Eudora’s, she had asked him if he’d seen it at his place a while ago, but he honestly hadn’t noticed it around. Diego felt a quick wave of loneliness at the loss of intimacy. She wouldn’t be leaving clothes at his house anymore. Unfairly it made him irritated with Klaus, for wearing the scarf.

He glared at Klaus in the car as they drove to the park from the previous night, annoyed at his incessant sniffling and shuffling around in the passenger seat. Klaus kept rummaging around the seat, the console and the glove compartment looking for something to blow his nose on, checking the same places over and over as if they might yield a different result.

“Would you sit still?!” Diego snapped at him.

“Sorry, do you have a tissue? Or a napkin or something? I’d settle for a receipt at this stage.” Klaus asked his brother.

“Nope.” Diego told him.

Actually, he had stuffed his pockets with toilet paper. But he didn’t want to admit that to Klaus because then he’d have to explain why he’d done that.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Klaus lifting the end of Eudora’s scarf to his face.

“Don’t wipe your nose on that.” Diego snapped at him.

“I forgot how grouchy you get when you’re sick.” Klaus told him sniffling pointedly loudly.

“I’m not sick.” Diego growled at him.

Klaus just gave him a knowing look and wiped his nose on the sleeve of the sweater he was borrowing.

At the park Diego led Klaus over to the rain shelter, where the body had been found the previous night. The park seemed empty to Diego, probably from the weather. But Klaus strolled around talking to people only he could see, so apparently there was plenty of ghosts in the park.

“What did he…” Klaus began to ask Diego, but his breath hitched, and he had to spin away and sneeze several times.

“Fuck…sorry…what did he look like?” Klaus asked sniffling.

“Why?” Diego asked.

“There are a lot of ghosts here, all of them want to talk to me, I need to narrow it down or we’ll be here all day.”

Diego shivered a bit imaging a ring of dead people around the two of them. He briefly described the man that died last night.

Klaus talked to the air for a few minutes then had a name and address for the dealer.

“Ok, we probably can’t go visit him until dark.” Diego planned aloud. “But we should keep an eye on him until then. Make sure he doesn’t sell any more in the meantime.”

“Well, seems like you’ve got this handled from now on…” Klaus began, thinking about how nice it would be to shut the ghost out again.

“Oh no.” Diego cut him off. “You’re not going anywhere until I’m sure this stuff is all gone.”

Klaus didn’t say anything, but he followed his brother back to the car with a faint smile, feeling cared for and a little flattered Diego wanted him around still after he had outlived his usefulness.

The two of them spent the rest of the day following the dealer around or sitting in Diego’s car parked across the street of the dealer’s house, if he was home.

Diego felt worse as the day went on. His sinuses felt stuffed and swollen, giving him a headache. He felt irritable about everything, like that he and Klaus kept sneezing at the same time. Diego would sneeze, usually just once, then Klaus would sneeze either at the same time or a second later although Klaus almost always sneezed two or three times.

The first time it happened Diego brushed it off as coincidence, but then it happened again a few minutes later.

After the fourth time Diego wondered if Klaus was doing it on purpose and felt irrationally annoyed about it.

The fifth time he was convinced Klaus was doing it to annoy him.

The sixth time Diego sneezed then Klaus followed with his usual triple Diego was about to snap at him.

But this time Klaus kept sneezing, over and over until he could barely catch his breath. Diego realized that Klaus had been right earlier, he was just grumpy because he was sick, letting every little thing annoy him.

Klaus’s sneezing finally tapered off and he made a miserable, whiny, congested noise.

“You OK?” Diego asked him.

“I’m Siiiiiiiiiiiick.” He whined pathetically, curling in on himself in the car seat.

Diego chuckled. “Yeah, you look like death warmed up.” He told his brother sympathetically.

He pulled the remaining dry toilet paper he had in his pockets out and offered it to Klaus.

“Sorry I got you sick.” Klaus told him taking the paper gratefully. He tented the paper around his nose and sneezed a few more times before blowing.

“I think Lopez got us both sick.” Diego admitted.

Klaus hummed in agreement.

By the time it was dark Klaus had fallen asleep, snoring with his mouth wide open, slumped against the car door. Diego snuck out of the car in ninja mode, careful not to wake his brother. He broke into the apartment of the dealer and beat the shit out of everyone he found there. He the gathered up all the drugs and flushed them down the toilet, then he took all the money he found and scattered it out the window into the wind.

“If I ever catch any of you dealing again, I’ll kill you.” He told the semi-conscious dealer and left.

Klaus woke up as Diego got back in the car.

“What happened?” He asked, his voice blurred with sleepiness and congestion.

“It’s all done.” Diego told him vaguely.

“Oh OK.” Klaus said. He was quiet as they drove along.

“You can just drop me off anywhere.” Klaus said after a few minutes.

Diego frowned at his brother.

“Why don’t you come stay with me for a few days.” He offered casually. He wasn’t sure where Klaus was living, he worried it wasn’t somewhere warm. Klaus always went down hard with colds, he just didn’t have any reserves.

Klaus didn’t answer right away, he seemed to be considering something. Then he glared at the backseat.

“OK I will Ben, don’t get your panties in a twist.” He snapped.

“Ben is back there?” Diego asked.

“Yeah, he’s really excited about having a slumber party.” Klaus told Diego, amusement filtering through the congestion in his voice.

“I need to take something though Diego.” Klaus said looking imploringly at Diego with his big, green eyes glassy with fatigue.

“I don’t think I can handle the ghosts much longer.” He admitted.

“Maybe if you stay clean, you’ll be more focused, and you can get better at controlling them.” Diego suggested hopefully.

Klaus just let out a long, sad sigh, which made him cough.

“Does Ben agree with me?” Diego asked.

“Ben points out that saying I need to get better at controlling ghosts implies I can control them at all now, however badly.” Klaus tells him, doing air quotes with his fingers.

Diego didn’t know what to say to that. He decided to compromise though, worried Klaus would run off otherwise.

“What about some NyQuil?” Diego asked.

“How much NyQuil are we talking?” Klaus ask cheering up a little.

“As much as you can drink without…I don’t know… hurting your organs.” Diego told him.

“OK deal.” Klaus agreed grinning.

They stopped at a pharmacy and loaded up on tissues and cough syrup and went back to Diego’s boiler room.

“You can take the bed.” Diego told his brother. Klaus was barely coherent at this point, having drunk a significant portion of a bottle of cough medicine.

“Don’t be stupid.” He slurred, yanking Diego onto the bed as he flopped gracelessly on to it then promptly fell asleep.

Diego took this as a suggestion they both share the bed. He gently moved Klaus until he was under the covers then climbed under himself. Klaus woke up enough to burrow into his side for warmth.

“Want to watch tv? Or do you just want to sleep?” Diego asked blowing his nose and throwing the balled-up tissue on the floor. His room was going to be disgusting by the time they were both better and he didn’t see the point in fighting it.

“TV.” Klaus said sleepily but didn’t sit up so he could see the tv. “Just no news.” He added.

Diego found a channel playing reruns of harmlessly funny 90s sitcoms to put on as background noise as they napped.

When he woke up Diego felt hungry. They had gotten sandwiches to eat in the car from a diner during the stake out. But that had been hours ago.

“Want something to eat?” Diego asked Klaus, seeing he was awake and watching a rerun of the nanny with awe in his feverish eyes.

“I want Fran Drecsher’s wardrobe.” Klaus told him earnestly.

Diego placed a palm over Klaus’s forehead.

“You’re really warm.” He worried.

“It’s OK.” Klaus told him, he paused and ducked his face under the blankets as he sneezed several times. “My thermostat’s always a bit messed up after withdrawal, I get a fever at the drop of a hat.”

Diego got up and microwaved them each a can of chicken soup. They sat up in bed together and ate the soup, watching the nanny. It made Diego think about their mother and feel nostalgic.

Klaus was a mess for the next few days, feverish, barely functioning, hardly able to string a sentence together without sneezing or coughing. The moment he realized Diego would allow it Klaus clung to his brother like a limpet, desperate for body heat and comfort, whining pathetically when Diego had to get up.

Diego wasn’t doing much better, he normally shrugged off illness but maybe all the running around doing vigilante stuff when he was already sick had given this virus a boost because he felt terrible. All he wanted to do was sleep, but he got up at irregular intervals to heat up soup, or make tea or refill glasses of water.

Diego thought he might be running a mild temperature, but he didn’t have a thermometer and the only person who was there to feel his forehead was Klaus, and Klaus was definitely running a fever so he probably wouldn’t be able to tell.

Diego worried that he wasn’t regulating Klaus’s NyQuil intake carefully enough. Klaus was loopy and making little sense. It was hard to understand anything he said anyway, his voice was shot from sneezing and coughing so often. It was both croaky and nasal, but he also put an extra whiny inflection in his voice that made it hard to process what he was saying. Klaus really should be sparing his voice, but instead he kept telling rambling, absurd stories and descriptions of fever dreams.

Luckily Diego had moved beyond his grumpy stage of illness or would have struggled not to snap at Klaus to shut up. Instead he was dopey and placid. He let Klaus use him as a hot water-bottle without complaint and didn’t kick him out of bed even though it sometimes felt like Klaus was radiating so much body heat at Diego he might melt. Diego managed to sleep pretty well despite all the rambling and snoring and coughing his brother was doing.

A few days after falling ill Diego woke up feeling much better. He was still a little stuffy but his throat wasn’t so sore and his head felt clearer. Diego realised Klaus had left before he even opened his eyes. He couldn’t feel Klaus’s body heat against him, or hear Klaus’s congested breathing. Diego stayed home for a few hours, cleaning the mess they had made of his bedroom, hoping Klaus was just out getting more cough medicine. But it was eventually apparent that Klaus was not returning when he saw that his wallet had been emptied of all cash.

Diego felt angry and betrayed, but he also hoped Klaus was feeling better and staying as safe as he possible could.


End file.
